


Fresh Start Bakery

by DaronwyK



Series: What if... HP Drabbles & Short Stories [39]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 04:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14709372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaronwyK/pseuds/DaronwyK
Summary: Hermione gives a second chance to those that deserve it.





	Fresh Start Bakery

**o.o.O.o.o**

**Forgiveness is the First Step**

**On the Road to Redemption**

**\- Anonymous**

**o.o.O.o.o**

  


Measure, mix, pour and repeat. The rhythm of working in the bakery was strangely soothing. There were rules, structure, and routines that helped calm his mind. Settling into the repetitive procedure of making dough was a great time to reflect on things that Rodolphus rarely found time to ponder. He’d been working here for nearly three months now, and his employer was as much a mystery to him today as she had been from the beginning. One of the conditions for his release from Azkaban had been that he find and maintain gainful employment for the duration of his parole. Finding employment as a former Death Eater had been…challenging. He and his brother had just about resigned themselves to never getting out, when they’d received a letter stating that they’d both been offered a position working in a new bakery in London.

 

The Fresh Start Bakery was the brainchild of Hermione Granger, the supposed brightest witch of her age. Rodolphus found it to be very strange that such a bright young woman had chosen to open a bakery and then hire men that had once tried their damnedest to kill her. The true root of her motivations was a conundrum that plagued him daily, and so like any true Slytherin, he began to puzzle it out. He never asked her outright, but instead chose to spend his days observing her. For someone that had been so close to the Boy-Who-Just-Wouldn’t-Die, he rarely heard her speak of him and had certainly never seen the wizard in her shop. Equally absent from her words and company was the Weasley boy that he remembered being part and parcel with the other two. It pointed to some manner of falling out.

 

The witch in question was at the other table icing a tray of cupcakes. While she could have used some manner of spell, she chose to do it by hand. It was almost hypnotizing watching her swirl the chocolate buttercream into perfect pillowy mounds on top of each tiny cake. She seemed to prefer to work back here, and given how charming his brother was proving to be with the female clientele, she often spent her afternoons in the rear of the shop with him. Odd as it seemed, it was helpful in his attempts to understand her.

 

“Do you ever take a day off?” Rodolphus drawled, eyes catching the slight hitch in her movements as he startled her.

 

“Not really…there’s too much to do,” she answered simply. “How’s the cinnamon roll dough coming?”

 

“Nearly finished, just need to set it to rise now,” he answered. She always did that, changed the topic from anything that could be construed as personal to something related to business. While some people were intrinsically private, after several months working with someone you generally began to lower some of your personal boundaries. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to have a normal conversation with me. I’m hardly going to infect you with my darkness through osmosis.”

 

She looked over at him, an eyebrow cocked in surprise. “How do you know about osmosis?”

 

“Unlike my brother, I do read.” He smirked a little, pleased that his gambit had paid off. In an attempt to understand her better, he’d started trying to learn more about the muggle world. There were some truly interesting things in muggle history, and a beginning exploration of muggle science was admittedly his current evening pastime. Rabastan had been teasing him rather relentlessly about it.  

 

Hermione seemed to appear somewhat contemplative as she carried the cupcakes over to the rack. “What kinds of things have you been reading?” she asked after a long silence.

 

“I started reading some muggle histories and then found myself reading about the evolution of muggle science and medicine. It’s actually fairly interesting how they’ve compensated for a lack of magic.” Rodolphus put the dough into a pan to rise. “Some of the more advanced concepts are a touch beyond me, but it’s intriguing.”

 

“I suppose I never thought you’d care anything about the muggle world,” she said.

 

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, just as there’s clearly much I don’t know about you. It would be arrogance to assume that you were just Hermione Granger: Gryffindor, war heroine, and business owner. We all have layers and hidden depths that we keep to ourselves.” He shrugged a bit. Everyone had skeletons in their closest, and things they were trying to make up for. His crimes were more apparent: he’d been a Death Eater and responsible for the death, torture, and suffering of countless people. That he was being given a chance to redeem himself at all was, frankly, astounding. What he truly wanted to know was what was driving her. Happy, well-adjusted people didn’t punish themselves by working seven days a week, often for upwards of sixteen hours at a time. She was trying to atone for something, and he couldn’t imagine what that could be. At the end of the war she’d been only eighteen, just barely an adult. What horrors could she have committed that would drive her to such ends?

 

“I suppose you’re right,” was her only answer. Anything else they might have said was dismissed as Rabastan came back, asking Hermione to help him out front. They were getting completely slammed and he was somewhat overrun.

 

o.o.O.o.o

 

Hermione got home that night, feet aching and the muscles in her lower back just screaming at her. She warded her flat with complex enchantments out of habit and undressed as she headed across the flat to have a nice hot shower. It had been a long day, made longer by the elder Lestrange brother’s somewhat probing commentary that afternoon. She couldn’t get his words out of her mind. Contrary to what people had been saying about her life choices, Hermione was not a fool and she was very aware that Rodolphus Lestrange was up to something. The older wizard’s strange hazel eyes followed her, often intently when they worked together and the air was always heavy with all the questions that he never voiced. Just thinking about the man was honestly exhausting, and she resolved to try and put him out of her mind for the night. A futile goal perhaps, but she’d try.

 

As the hot water pounded down on her sore shoulders, Hermione’s thoughts turned towards the events that had led up to her founding the Fresh Start Bakery. Like many, she’d attended Lucius Malfoy’s very public trial. He was one of the few Death Eaters that had demanded the full proceedings be public and open to the press. Most of his former compatriots had been whisked through sealed proceedings and carted off to Azkaban with no details publicized. The full scope of his trial had tilted her world on its axis. The man had been forced to take the Dark Mark at sixteen, a spell that was something of a hybrid between legilimens and a pensieve allowing the Wizengamot and court gallery to observe the memory. The sight of Abraxas Malfoy holding his teenaged son down had haunted her, and she was not the only person who had seen the bruises and blood on the young Lucius’ body while it had happened.

 

In the end, he’d been found not criminally responsible and sentenced to ten years of magical monitoring. It appeared that on the books, there was an old law that said anyone under-aged who was forced or coerced into illegal acts could not be held responsible for the consequences of that act. The crimes and all following circumstances were instead the fault of the coercing party. It had made her wonder just how many other Death Eaters had been marked when they were still under-aged, and after pressure from her and Harry, all the previously convicted Death Eaters had been compelled to surrender memories of the day they accepted the Dark Mark, and the circumstances leading up to it. Nearly half of the convicted Death Eaters could claim to have been marked as teenagers, and all in questionable circumstances.

 

In emergency session, a set of conditions were drafted for the release of those Death Eaters on a modified kind of probation. Even though many could boast old family fortunes, it was decided they would all need to be gainfully employed, to earn some measure of redemption in the eyes of society. They needed to earn their way back into society, and not just have it handed to them. The problem, naturally, was that no one was willing to hire them. As she’d listened to Kingsley explain the issues, she’d been reminded of something her father had once told her. He’d said that helping others was the way you helped yourself. Before she’d realized what she was doing, she’d offered to sponsor a couple convicts who needed placements.

 

That offer had naturally sparked conflict between Hermione and her friends. They just didn’t understand why she’d want to help Death Eaters, no matter their past…their deeds should have spoken for themselves. Ron and Harry just didn’t understand that sometimes you could do truly horrible things because you’d been backed into a corner. She was grateful that neither of them had been forced into that position during the war, but a little resentful that they couldn’t understand that she had. She’d hurt the two people she loved most in this world, her parents. The memory charm she’d used on them had been so extensive, that reversing it had the very real risk of rendering them mindless. She’d used powerful, dangerous magic on people that had loved and trusted her. She’d stolen their memories and played God with their lives. It was an act that she could never undo, and never forgive herself for. Helping the Lestrange brothers to reintegrate into society was something that she could do, however small and insignificant a thing it was.

 

Hermione sighed and rested her forehead against the smooth tile of the shower stall, hating that her guilt was still twisting in her gut so painfully. She deserved that pain, that gnawing ache, but a part of her just wanted to be free from it, even if she didn’t deserve to be.

 

o.o.O.o.o

 

Rodolphus let himself into the Bakery. It was early, the sun not yet above the horizon. It was unusual to be here before his enigmatic employer, but today the building stood dark and empty. Or at least, that was how it had appeared at first blush. He could hear soft, muffled cries coming from the store room. A frown creased his forehead as he advanced slowly. A sliver of light fell across the worn wooden floorboards, and led him towards the source of the disturbance.

 

Sitting in the middle of a mess of spilt flour, was Hermione Granger. Her head was resting on her knees, arms wrapped tightly around them as she sobbed. Flour dusted her wild curls, and little bits fell as her shoulders shook with her grief. Rodolphus had heard plenty of crying in his life, and knew the distinct tones of pain, sorrow, and loss. This was heart-wrenching, true grief. He went over and eased himself down onto the floor beside her, wrapping an arm around her slender shoulders. Her immediate response was to stiffen and try to pull away, but he didn’t let her.

 

“Shh…it’s all right,” Rodolphus said gently. He’d never seen this witch so completely out of control of her emotions.

 

“It’s all my fault…” she whispered.

 

“What is?” he prompted, keeping his tone gently. This might well be his only opportunity to seek answers from the witch. He was certainly not going to pass it up.

 

“They’re dead…and I’ll never get to tell them I’m sorry.” She turned, instinctively seeking the only comfort available to her,

 

Rodolphus was eternally grateful he’d told Rabastan to sleep in today, as he found Hermione curling into his side. Clearly she’d been starved for physical comfort, or else she’d never had turned to him so easily. “Who did you lose?” he asked, a hand rubbing soothing circles against her back.

 

“My parents…” She managed to choke out.

 

He tightened his embrace a little. “What happened?”

 

“I wiped their memories and sent them away…they loved me, trusted me, and I betrayed them. They died in a stupid accident on the other side of the world and it’s my fault they were even there.” Her hand tangled in his shirt, holding on desperately.

 

Suddenly, it all made sense. Guilt was a great motivator, and often drove people to acts of altruism to appease their own conscience. He’d never really felt guilt over the things he’d done, but just now he felt a twinge of it. Their actions had driven this girl to a place where wiping her parents’ memories had seemed to be the only viable option to keep them alive. Distantly, he wondered how many other people had been forced to make such desperate choices.

 

“You were just a girl, and you did the only thing you could to try and protect them,” Rodolphus said quietly. “They wouldn’t want to see you in so much pain.”

 

“Nothing ever makes it go away. I work until I’m too exhausted to do anything but sleep, but then they’re in my dreams, blaming me for what happened. I don’t know how to make it go away,” Hermione whispered.

 

“Forgiving yourself is the only way to start to heal. You gave Rabastan and me a chance to find redemption and forgiveness in a world that had written us off, but it’s always easier to forgive others,” Rodolphus said quietly. “Guilt is toxic, and if you keep beating yourself up over the past…it will poison every part of your life. You have to forgive yourself and give yourself permission to be happy again.”  

 

“I don’t know how,” she whispered, though the tears had slowly stopped.

 

“I’ll help you figure it out, if you’ll let me,” Rodolphus offered. “After all, a Slytherin always pays his debts.” He gave her a sly little wink, glad when she returned it with the tiniest of smiles. Perhaps in helping her lay her personal demons to rest, he might find a kind of absolution of his own. It would be a rough road to walk, but maybe he didn’t need to walk it alone.

~Fin


End file.
